A Quaker was examined before the Board of Excise, respecting certain duties; the Commissioners thinking themselves disrespectfully treated by his thee- and thouing, one of them with a stern countenance, asked him—Pray, Sir, do you know for what we sit here? Yea, replied Nathan, I do—some of you for a thousand, and others for seventeen hundred and fifty pounds a year.
Comparisons of Drunkenness.—A man is said to be as drunk as an owl, when he cannot see—as drunk as a sow, when he wallows in the dirt—as drunk as a beggar, when he is very impudent—as drunk as the devil, when he is inclined to mischief, and—as drunk as a Lord, when he is every thing that is bad.
Walking Stewart having given an account of his being cast away on an unknown coast, thus expresses himself: ‘After walking a considerable way up the country, we saw, to our inexpressible satisfaction, a man hanging on a gibbet. This delight affored us by this cheering sight is inconceivable, for it convinced us that we were in a civilized country.’
When the Earl of Clancartie was Captain of a man of war, he lost his Chaplain. The First Lieutenant, a Scotchman, announced his death to his Lordship, adding, he was sorry to inform him that the chaplain died a Roman Catholic. Well, so much the better, said his Lordship. Oot awa my Lord, how can you say so of a Breetish Clergyman? Why, replied his Lordship, because I believe I am the first Captain that ever could boast of a Chaplain who had any religion at all.
An attorney being employed to draw the Testament of a rich man, was requested to word it in such a manner, that no room might be left for contestation among his heirs. That quoth the man of law, is imposible. Can I go beyond our Saviour whose Testament has been a perpetual source of contest for these eighteen hundred years?
The late learned Lord Kames, one day, after coming out of the Court of Edinburgh, went to make water at a place where the centinel on duty assumes a power of levying a fine for such transgression. My Lord said the soldier, you are fined. For what? For pissing at this place. How much? Threepence, my Lord. There is six-pence for you, then, Sir; and remember you owe me a piss.
Mr Ogilvy, a Scottish Clergyman, at Lunan, in Forfarshire, had a great deal of eccentricity in his character and manner.—One Sunday when he was in the middle of his sermon, an old woman, who kept an alehouse in the parish, fell asleep. Her neighbour jogged her, in order to awaken her. The Minister seeing this, said, I’ll waken her fast enough; and immediately giving a loud whistle, cried out ‘Janet! a bottle of ale and a dram!’ ‘Coming, Sir,’ said the old lady, starting out of her nap.
The Sexton of a parish-church in Shropshire insisted on a poor man, who had lost his leg by amputation, paying sixteen pence for burying it. The man appealed to the Rector, who said that he could not relieve him in the present case; but he would consider in his fees when the remainder of his body came to be buried.
Epitaph on a Physician.
Here Docter Fisher lies interr’d,